Slipped in between the F-tastic back-slap fest that was Lexus’s 2015 Detroit auto show press conference—Hey, it’s the new GS F! Hey, we’re goin’ racing in the RC F!—was a news tidbit about a small engine with big implications for Toyota’s luxury brand. The company plans to spread the turbocharged 2.0-liter four from the NX200t to more models starting this year, a move that would finally bring Lexus’s powertrain offerings closer to par with the European brands with which it competes.
Everyone from BMW to Audi to Mercedes to Lincoln to . . . well, you get it, everyone uses turbocharged four-cylinder engines throughout their lineups, so it makes sense for Lexus to shove its predominantly V-6–powered vehicles into this decade. A Lexus representative wouldn’t tell us which models would receive the turbo four but did say that the small engine would replace the 2.5-liter V-6 in a variety of Lexuses worldwide. In the U.S., that means we can expect the IS250 (the only U.S.-market Lexus that uses the 204-hp 2.5-liter six) to adopt the more-powerful turbo engine, which makes 235 horsepower in the 2015 NX200t.
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We’re also told that any Lexus that currently offers engines displacing as little as 3.0 liters could also get the turbo four; it won’t replace the 3.0-liter-plus engine, but rather augment it. Again, no details were given, but it’s safe to assume that Lexus could shove the turbo motor into the U.S.-market ES sedan and possibly even the larger GS to realize some fuel-efficiency gains. Certainly 235 horsepower is enough for the ES, given how the ES300h hybrid makes do with just 220 ponies, and GS competitors such as the Audi A6, BMW 5-series, and Cadillac CTS all utilize 200-to-240-hp turbo fours in their most basic iterations.
